"Where you going?" shouted Quartel.
"To get a decent horse," said Crawford, without turning back. "You want to try and stop me?"
He was sweating again. It was a little sorrel pony with a running walk so relaxed Crawford could hear the teeth pop at every step like a Tennessee walker, and a rocking-chair would have been harder on a man. Yet he was sweating again.
"They say the hombres who curse the brasada most love it the best," said Aforismo. "You must love it like a woman."
Crawford turned his head sharply toward the man. He hadn't realized he had been swearing out loud. It hadn't been at the brush. It was so confused now, inside and out. It was hard to breathe, and the muscles across his stomach were tight as a stretched dally, and he could feel the pain spreading from his hips. All the symptoms of genuine pain. Was that what Huerta had said? Sweating, trembling, tears in the eyes. The doctor's voice was in his ears, suave, insidious. The mind plays funny tricks sometimes. It couldn't be. Not his mind. Not my mind, Huerta, not my mind.
"Yeah," grinned Bueno Bailey, forking a big dun on Crawford's other side. "There never was a man could cuss the brush like Crawford. I'd rather listen to him talking his way through a mogote of chaparral than hear music."
Crawford hardly heard him. The perspiration was sticky beneath his armpits, his shirt clung to his back with it. And now it was that other, stirring in him, so confused with the pain at first he could not define it, or would not—the same thing he had felt there at the corral, watching Africano. And worse than the pain. No. He wasn't afraid. I'm not afraid, Huerta. How could he be? How could I be? Living with horses all my life. How could I be?
"Take it easy," snapped Bueno. "What's the matter?"
Crawford jerked the reins against his horse, realizing he had allowed it to sidle into the dun. The sorrel shifted uncertainly the other way, thumping into Aforismo's animal. This time Crawford's reining was even more violent and it caused the sorrel to shy.